☆ Tadami Yamada's short story
禁転載。著作権は山田維史に属します。
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The Visit
by Tadami Yamada
It was her seventy or around the age, one night Oshin dreamed that her most close friends, wearing beautiful rainbow colored mantles which were made from the feather of the bird of the heaven, overtook her one by one, and they left her behind alone. Though she had a knowledge about the bird called ‘Karyobingah’in the heaven in a sermon, of course she really hadn't seen it. But in the dream, she supposed it to be the Karyobingah's feathers. Her friends, becoming aware or not of Oshin who was standing there and was seeing them off, gone away in haste. It was a beautiful dream but solitary.
It has been over ten years from the day. Now the dream has come true. One or two of her companion on each year, and all friends have passed away in order of her dream. Whenever she heard of their death, she would always remember the dream.
“I saw the thing that one must not see. I had the knowledge that one must not have,”she really thought so.
Crouching in a sunny spot on the porch, she used to wipe tears that had been exhausted ago. Old Imai who lives in a neighboring village is now the only companion in her old age.
It was the month before last when their another companion Mr. Yokota departed. At his funeral Oshin heard that the young couple of the Imais whispered each other.
“The rests are my old man and granny Oshin,”said Mrs.Imai to her husband.
“Yes, they remain yet.”said Mr.Imai.
In spite of they talked in a low voice, they didn't hesitate to say for the olds. Because they were convinced that the olds were hard of hearing.
“Following the dream. All things were following the dream,”Oshin murmured, telling her beads. She saw Old Imai's hands to be shivering with fear.
Man, anybody gets old. Mr. Yokota's family and his acquaintances accepted naturally the death of eighty-three years old man. All of them were also truth that the dead's family gave a sigh of saving trouble for the old in a corner of their heart.
“Mr. Yokota was a lacky man. He has died a peaceful death, peaceful death,”Old Imai said to Oshin.“In comparison with him, granny Okatsu was・・・.”
“No, let's stop to think her like that. Nobody might be wrong,”Oshin said tenderly to Old Imai.
Miss Okatsu had died before Mr. Yokota's death. She was only sixty-one years old, and had lost her husband long ago. She lived with her son's family who is on a small scale farmstead. Although they were not so well off they were happy, and took care of the old quite enough. It was the time when the circumstance had changed so that the old was in the palsy and the senile dementia. She became to do incontinence of urine crawling here and there. It seemed that they had to look after her the whole day. But it was impossible to do that for them who had to sweat in the farm all the time. Whereupon they, feeling uneasy, decided to lock the old up in the barn by the farm while their working. There was another reason too. Okatsu crawled about anywhere, and was found to be sleeping on her face in the corn-field in the back of their house once. Untill at that time they had set a large empty can on the table beside Okatsu's bed, and she used to beat it by a stick as she had to call them on her business. Looking after the old was almost grandchildren's task. They would interrupt their own business and playing whenever they heard the sound of the can being struck. If they pretended to be not able to hear the sound, the old was going on to be beating. The sound that was kept up feebly with the old's mascular strength going out gradually cast uneasy shadows on the children's heart. They felt too awkward to remain in the presence of the old. Besides Miss Ohta had forgot frequently what she wanted to get them to do, or else she asked simply for them to be her bedside. The children's plqaying gone away step by step from neighborhood.
Every day, in the morning, a bowlful meal was left for the old as all family people gone out, and got to work. Okatsu did't see anybody except her family for three months untill she had died. She was suffocated to death. Stuffing food in her throat, she was lying on her face in the bowl.
When Oshin heard that Okatsu was locked up in a barn, she visited to see the situation together with Mr. Yokota and Old Imai. Both men refused to go seeing at first, though Oshin forced them to go as she remembered that her dream.
Yokota and Imai had a dread of some false charge after seeing, so they ceased to visit her directly. They climbed up a hill where they could look down the barn from. The three olds, filling lining up in a single, minding their own footing with a stick, climbed up a narrow pass breathlessly.
But they couldn't watch the inside of the barn which had a dormer under the eaves. They could only see a few chickens pecking foods around the barn.
The three olds staied at there for nearly one hour without saying.
When they started to leave, Imai said suddenly,“That is Okatsu. Look there! That is a her hand,” pointing the barn.
“Where? Where is she, Imai? ” said Yokota.
“Look over there, the right corner of under the barn,”said Imai.“Don't you see it? There is a broken panel. Look here! The panel was broken like mouse biting off.”
“Oh, I see a panel was broken,”Yokota said.“But I can't see the hand. Can you see it, Oshin? ”
“No, I can't.”
Oshin shook her head. She wondered that Old Imai might have mistaken something for Okatsu's hand.
Just then it was that Oshin was so surprised as she saw undoubtedly the skinny hand which came out abruptly from the hole of the broken panel, and the hand beated the ground as if it was beckoning someone.
“Wow! ”
Oshin took her breath.
“What do you think, Oshin? Did you see the hand? ”said oncemore Yokota. He stared down on the barn sticking his face out.
“Never, I didn't,”said Oshin.
“You didn't see it, did you? ”said Yokota.“Imai, you must not say a nasty thing like that.”
Yokota seemed taking it easy, so looked back to Oshin, and made a sign with his eyes to her,“I am afraid it is possible that Imai's life may be in denger.”
Oshin replied nothing. And then she made a sign with her eyes to Imai, not to Yokota,“Please don't say anything this man.”
It is a day of an autumn breeze.
Oshin is blankly looking at her front garden from the window, warming her hands with the brazier in the living-room. Nothing sound was heard except faint hissing of the kettle on the brazier. She is sitting for many hours by the window, longing for Old Imai's visit. He is the only companion in her old age, but didn't visit her for the last ten days or as much days. He used to tell her that his family didn't easily allow him to go out as he had an unsteady gait.
“Don't you say such thing, Mr. Imai. You have healthy eyes and ears. You must not accept for treating you as the old. You need not obey easily youth's saying,”Oshin said strongly to Imai.
Just at that moment she heard the sound of foot steps on the gateway. It is the sound of Old Imai's.
“As expected, here comes Mr. Imai. Though he didon't visit me for ten days. I supposed that he must come along today,”she murmurs.
Oshin makes a fire in the brazier hastily with a smile.
“Oh, watch your steps! ”
Old Imai comes along very slowly with a stick, hanging down his head. The stick stumbles over a small stone. The stone rolls. Old Imai seems to go to the front door. Oshin looks at his usual brown-gray colored trousers very longingly.
She waits a minute, but there is not calling.
“Maybe he goes to see the Bonsai - the potted dwarf trees - in the backyard,”Oshin murmurs again.
She looks like as if she were a young love.
Twenty minutes have passed. Old Imai doesn't call.
“Oh nasty! What is really he doing? ”
As she gets tired of waiting, she goes to the door, and opens it.
The autumn sun is setting now. Red leaves of trees in the garden are bright like blazing, and shoot her eyes. It looks as if those red leaves are the Karyobingah's feathers in that dream. It looks the Karyobingahs fly away all together.
“Mr. Imai! My old man! ”
Nothing reply to Oshin's cry.
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Copyright 2008 Tadami Yamada. All Rights Reserved.
© Rakuten Group, Inc.
